


Real Good to See Ya

by ryry_peaches



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Headaches & Migraines, M/M, Podfic Welcome, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Sickfic, therapy speak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 01:56:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19367803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryry_peaches/pseuds/ryry_peaches
Summary: Bucky feels like he’s been kicked square in the chest.  He can’t breathe, he’s lost his wind, he swears the world goes fuzzy for a moment because he would know that voiceanywhere,and okay — he nearly throws Shuri and T’Challa out of the way, might have barrelled them right over if they didn’t wisely (and, amusingly, in unison) step out of his way themselves — bounds across the room in like three steps —“Don’t!”  Steve Rogers says, and Bucky skids to a stop, literally, probably looks like a cartoon character.





	Real Good to See Ya

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how this became what it is. It started as just Bucky getting a migraine, classic sickfic, and turned into this mess of emotional longing. Enjoy.
> 
> Please don't let the PTSD tags freak you out. It's there, it's acknowledged, but there's not graphic flashbacks or anything particularly scary, I promise.

Bucky is pretty sure he’s going blind.

He pulls his thick, handwoven quilt over his head, squeezing his eyes shut, and in the darkness behind his lids he comes to the realization that he’s not actually on his way to blindness, but that’s a reasonable first thought to race through a person’s head when they awaken to find themselves overcome with dazzling light. The second thought that hits him, as he blinks his eyes open in the dimness under the quilt, is that his head is fucking _pounding._ Like a tiny hammer is beating rhythmically against his skull, right at the crown. Like all the pulse points in his body have traveled up to his brain and settled there.

And the third thought is that fuck, is his stomach pissed.

He tugs his covers down, eyes slitted open just enough to see, and rolls clumsily out of bed, quilt around his shoulders, bile rising up his esophagus; he grabs the pitcher from his little wooden dresser in just enough time to spew into it, last night’s dinner scorching his throat as he vomits, and probably all of his nighttime meds as well. He heaves once, then twice, gasping for air as he watches it hit the white porcelain. In the back of his mind, he registers that it’s all like bright orange, and maybe he should ask the doctors just what is in all those pills they pump him with, because it’s been literally months since he ate something that wasn’t brown or green and completely organic, locally sourced.

When Bucky’s body is finally done purging whatever the hell made his stomach lose it, he spits heartily trying to dispel the taste of acid and eroded _doro wat._ He fumbles into the bathroom and reaches for the sink, cups his hands under the faucet, rinsing and spitting and taking a few hesitant, testing sips before splashing himself in the face because now that there’s less urgency in his actions, he’s realized that he’s really sweaty. He shrugs off the quilt, letting it pool on the bathroom floor — _whatever,_ he keeps it clean enough — and spreads his arms a bit, relishing in the cool morning air against his sticky-hot skin, not together enough to think to grab a towel.

Relatively sure now that his stomach isn’t planning any more sneaky surprises, he stumbles back to bed, snatching his quilt back up on the way. No way does he plan on covering his overheated body back up, but he draws the quilt up over his face as he lies back down, successfully blocking out the retina-scorching stream of sunlight.

But now he feels like he can’t breathe. _Shut up,_ he tells his subconscious sternly, _I know what suffocating feels like, and this ain’t it._ But his mind has never tilted towards the rational, and even with Shuri’s magic HYDRA-brain-fuckery cure, it’s still fractured and confused at the best of times — which this certainly is not. Groaning, he throws his quilt to the floor and stretches, kicking the sheets down. He presses his palm over his right eye, shutting the left as tight as possible.

The little fireworks that go off behind his lids pulse in time to the steady pounding that’s spreading through his skull.

Bucky knows what dying feels like, knows in his bones that this is not that. But the same irrational voice that claimed he was suffocating is _sure_ that he’s dying and that nothing can stop it happening.

There’s a little icebox in the corner of the room — it’s all kitchen, bed, everything together in one big room — and he rolls out of bed once more, stumbles over to it. He gropes for a handkerchief from the little pile he keeps there and ties a handful of crushed ice up inside, holds it to his head.

It brings about eight seconds of relief. And then the hammer returns.

This is a migraine, just a migraine — it’s painful, but, like, nothing compared to a lot of pains which Bucky has endured more or less stoically throughout his life. Except, his head shrinker’s been on him lately about not suppressing things, about expressing his true feelings and reactions. Letting them course through him. She talked at him about plants whose roots get suffocated under soil that’s packed too tightly, not allowing in enough water or air or sunshine.

So now when Bucky feels bad things, he’s supposed to cry or punch his pillow or whatever he has to do to achieve catharsis, which will keep the soil of his brain loose and porous and allow the blossoms of his mental health to bloom healthy and bright. Or…something.

Honestly, it all still sounds like a crock of shit to Bucky, but the thing is that it _works_ and who is he to question it?

So he’s not supposed to endure this pain stoically. He tugs all the sheets off his bed and lies down on the bare mattress pad, blessedly cool over his spring-free mattress — medium firm, he was told; as much as he likes the idea of a cloud-soft bed, he can’t sleep on one too soft anymore — and curls up on his side, knees at his chest like a child, and draws in breath through gritted teeth. His stomach rumbles, which is almost certainly gas, and he abandons his ice pack in favor of pressing his palm to his abdomen, digging in like a massage.

He needs to get some rest, needs to sleep this off, needs to be alert — he has only one responsibility in the world at this moment and that’s to the goats, who need to be fed and watered, checked on and let out. But he can’t care for them when he feels like his brain is about to fucking explode. _How can a headache hurt this much?_ How has he been shot, beated, poisoned, waterboarded and starved, but this completely natural migraine is pushing him to his breaking point?

It’s at this point that his phone rings, abrasive, full volume, the sound of his big band ringer drilling into his skull — he lurches across the room and swipes the little green _answer_ icon without even checking to see who’s calling.

“Bucky?” Shuri’s voice is soft and strong all at once, and it pounds against his head like heavy rain. At least he’s finally got her calling him Bucky and not Sergeant Barnes. “Are you alright? You’re late for breakfast —”

“FUCK,” he says, oops, of course he forgot he had plans with Shuri, and, _double fuck,_ her brother, and then, “Terribly sorry, HRH, I woke up with a hell of a headache —”

“Oh?” He can almost hear her sympathetic expression through the phone. “How bad? Have you taken anything for it?”

“No,” he huffs lightly, “I don’t…keep medication at home, ‘cept what I’m prescribed. My head doctor thinks it’s a bad idea.”

Shuri is quiet for about three seconds, which is like a record for her, and then she says, “Hold tight, be right there,” and before Bucky can even decide whether he’s going to protest or thank her or what, she hangs up.

Well. That’s that, then.

First order of business is to locate the pitcher of his fluorescent vomit and flush the contents, because he’s half-blind with pain but he’ll be damned twice over if he’s going to let a lady see his puke, let alone a princess. Even if she _is_ a doctor — right now she’s just a friend. It’s disrespectful. And then, in the vein of tidiness, he smooths his sheets and quilt back over the bed and then he just…sits on it and waits, rubbing at his forehead, at a total loss.

It’s not even ten minutes before there’s a sharp rap at the door, making Bucky’s head throb like he’s been slammed into a wall. “‘S’open,” he croaks, and squints against the bright rectangle of sunlight the door creates when Shuri swings it open.

For some reason, he did _not_ expect her brother. It’s one thing to be shirtless and sweaty in front of Shuri — for one thing, she’s around so much that she’s basically family, and for another, she’s operated on him so many times; she’s seen him fully naked, seen the ugly stump of his arm, and remains wholly unfazed.

The king, on the other hand? It’s not that Bucky and T’Challa don’t know one another well enough, aren’t friends, or at least friendly. Still, though. Bucky leaps of the bed and grapples for his nearest shawl — a long, wide cotton rectangle that’s blessedly draped over the bedside lamp — and fastens it haphazardly over his left shoulder and chest before extending his hand. “T’Challa, welcome, I apologize for the…” He gestures vaguely around the room. _Mess?_

T’Challa smiles warmly and shakes Bucky’s proffered hand, and then Shuri is shoving between them, pushing her brother out of the way. “You.” She points at Bucky. “Sit.” She points at his bed. He complies as she wheels on T’Challa. “You. Give me my bag.” He hands it over without a word, but amusement plays at the corners of his mouth. 

Shuri presses the back of her hand to Bucky’s forehead and tuts. “Headache or migraine?” She wants to know.

“Migraine. Definitely. Vomited and everything.” He grimaces.

Shuri reaches into her bag and extracts a green bottle that’s identical to the recycled-plastic pharma bottles that line Bucky’s bathroom sink. “That’s all?”

He grunts the affirmative.

“Alright.” She twists the bottle open and dumps four tiny tan pills into her palm.

“This will set you right. It’s non-addictive but it’s much stronger than ibuprofen. Do you feel up to eating? You shouldn’t take it on an empty stomach.”

He shrugs, trying not to sway forward. Or at all. “I’m up for anything that’ll get this gone,” he says raspily, and watches her pull a protein bar and water bottle from her bag.

“Eat this —” Shuri hands him the protein bar “-- and take these.” She leans over to set the water bottle and the pills on his bedside table. “Try to get some rest, and call me when you’re done, okay?” Bucky warily clocks the glance she throws at T’Challa, who’s studying the contents of the wall-mounted shelves on the other side of the room (a framed photo of Steve from their school days, one of himself, Steve, and Peggy during the war, a couple of those tiny potted cacti, and a set of Jules Verne novels — newly printed but with dust jackets that remind him of his youth). “We would still like to dine with you today, even if it’s late. We have something important to discuss with you.”

 _That_ registers sharply, cutting through the pounding in Bucky’s head like nothing else she’s said. “If you’re deporting me,” he croaks, “I’d like a rain check.” He unwraps the protein bar — cranberry granola something — wincing at the crinkle of the wrapper.

“Don’t be such a pessimist. We have glad news, don’t we, bro?” She looks back at T’Challa again, grinning.

“You use far too much American slang, Shuri,” T’Challa says, but he’s grinning. “Come on now, we should leave Sergeant Barnes alone to rest.” He crosses to Bucky and rests a hand on his shoulder. “Feel better,” he says warmly.

Bucky grins weakly back, wishes to God the king of the fuckin’ country wasn’t seeing him like this.

The second the door slams shut behind T’Challa and Shuri, Bucky tears off his shawl, slinging it haphazardly across the room, where it hits the wall and flutters to the floor. Then he reaches for his water bottle and is almost delighted to find that it’s the kind with the sports cap that he can pull out and push in with his teeth; he tugs on the lid and takes a fair swig before he pops all four little powdery beige pills at once, following them up with half the water.

He lies back as soon as he’s done drinking. Curls up on his left side, reaches his arm to cover his head with it, elbow bent, tangling his fingers in the hair at the base of his neck to keep it there, and he tries to close his eyes lightly even though he wants so badly to squeeze them shut so hard if would mess up his face.

Before long, he loses himself to the pounding, like being dragged out and underwater by an undertow.

* * *

Bucky’s first thought is that it’s cold. Super cold. He fell asleep without blankets or a shirt, and despite the Wakandan sunshine beating down outside, heating his home right through the walls, he feels freezing.

And then he realizes, after a moment of bleary blinking during which he scrounges for his quilt, that he feels…fine? His head is clear, not aching, not pounding. There aren’t words for the stark absence of pain, the relief of the loss, but it feels good. Pure.

He scrounges around for his phone, finding it on the bedside table, and clicks Shuri’s contact photo (grinning and flipping him off with a glitter-polished finger), jamming his phone between his cheek and shoulder and casting about for his cleanest tunic and blue jeans.

The tunic, like most of Bucky’s shirts, has been tailored so that where there would usually be a left sleeve, there’s just a thin seam, and he can get it on easily enough. There’s a little metal loop stitched into the buttonhole on his jeans, keeping it stiff so he can force the button through with one hand, and it’s the damnedest thing — Shuri has assured him that accessible clothing is a whole movement. Back in Bucky’s day, amputees just figured ways around, which wasn’t easy. He’s pretty sure less-than-rich amputees still do, and he holds firmly that shit which ain’t accessible to the poor ain’t accessible, period. But. Gift horses, and all.

“Sergeant Bucky,” Shuri says, and there’s a lilt like laughter in her voice. “Feeling better?”

“Ya —” Bucky’s voice sticks in the back of his throat, and he coughs it out. “Yeah, sure am. Whatever you gave me, it hit me good. Thank you, HRH.”

“Excellent!” She makes a noise like she plans to say more, and then there’s a scuffling noise, a clang, a muffled voice, a different muffled voice, and a moment of static before: “How does pizza sound?”

“Um.” He swallows his confusion. “Good?”

“Great!” And she hangs up on him.

He furiously messages her:

 **Chat: BARNES AND NOBLE**

**JBuckyB: Where do you want me to meet you?**

**forshuri: we’re coming to you we’ve got brooklyn pizza :þ**

**_Seen by_ JBuckyB, forshuri, iNakia, _and_ NotT’Challa**

_Brooklyn pizza?_ Bucky shrugs to himself; T’Challa and Shuri _do_ travel a lot, so, while American food isn’t exactly common in Wakanda, either of them could have picked up a taste for New York style pizza. Or, more likely, Shuri is having him on. She teases him relentlessly; it’s almost like having a little sister again, and these days the reminder of Becky makes him smile rather than mope. (In Bucky’s mind, Rebecca is forever nineteen, dressed in trousers and smoking cigarettes, leading dances and getting haircuts that scandalize the Sunday morning crowd.)

Bucky shakes himself out of his thoughts and glances around the room. There’s a low, square table pushed against the wall with a lone patchwork cushion in front of it — he usually dines alone and dislikes being in the open. He drags the table to the middle of the room and gathers the stack of cushions on the other side of it, lays them out, one on each side of the table — there will only be three of them, but he likes the order of symmetry. He does only set out three dining sets, though — mismatched and just as colorful as the canvas quilt of the cushions — no reason to clean up an unused set.

It’s not long before there’s a sharp rap at the door, and Bucky flies to open it, to greet…a very empty-handed Shuri and T’Challa. He waves them inside, over towards the table, regardless. T’Challa is holding a duffel bag, but there’s no food in sight. Shuri stands on tiptoes to wrap her arms around Bucky’s neck, and he hugs her back, returns T’Challa’s smiling nod of greeting, and then steps back an inch or so to fix them with his best accusatory glare. “I was promised pizza. I been laid up all day, unable to eat, and now I’m _craving_ pizza. Aren’t politicians meant to try and garner favor with your subjects?”

“I am not a politician,” Shuri retorts, at the same time T’Challa points out, “You are not one of my subjects.”

“Semantics,” Bucky replies with an airy wave of his hand. “You can’t just put a fella in the mood for pizza and then hold out on him, it’s unconstitutional —”

T’Challa is opening his mouth, looking like he’s trying not to laugh, when a deep voice beats him to the punch from the doorway. “Wakanda isn’t a constitutional monarchy.”

Bucky feels like he’s been kicked square in the chest. He can’t breathe, he’s lost his wind, he swears the world goes fuzzy for a moment because he would know that voice _anywhere,_ and okay — he nearly throws Shuri and T’Challa out of the way, might have barrelled them right over if they didn’t wisely (and, amusingly, in unison) step out of his way themselves — bounds across the room in like three steps —

“Don’t!” Steve Rogers says, and Bucky skids to a stop, literally, probably looks like a cartoon character, and he can _feel_ his face scrunching up, _that’s not right,_ why is Steve telling him _no —_

And Steve shakes his head, and Bucky gets his eyes to focus, and _there he is,_ haloed in low, golden sun like he’s a portrait on a prayer votive, and he’s smiling, and he’s got a scrub of scruff on his jaw, and he’s holding — _holy shit,_ he’s holding _Lombardi’s pizza boxes._ That’s why he said no, because Bucky was about to throw himself into Steve’s arms like a lovestruck old Hollywood dame and it would have decimated the best pizza in New York City. (At least, it used to be the best pizza in New York City. But Steve lives there — ish — so Bucky will trust him.)

“It’s cold,” Steve says, an apologetic pull at his mouth, like he’s got anything to be sorry for. “It, you know, the jet here, and the day, and it would be a crime to reheat it, so…”

 _Wait. What?_ “You’ve been here _all day?”_ Bucky whirls on Shuri, with her sparkling happy eyes. “He’s been here all day?”

“I didn’t want to disturb you when you weren’t well,” Steve says before Shuri can answer, and Bucky pauses for a moment to silently and grudgingly acknowledge that it’s probably better to see Steve for the first time in more than six months when he isn’t all sweaty and vomiting, but _still._ Still, he doesn’t want to upset this moment, right here. He takes the stack of boxes from Steve and pretty much shoves them at T’Challa, which is disrespectful but whatever, he’ll apologize later, and then he _does_ launch himself into Steve’s arms like a dame in an old movie, and trusts that he won’t slip because he’s huge but Steve is bigger still and a hell of a lot stronger to boot, he can take it, does, takes a half step backwards to recover from the force of Bucky’s weight landing square against him, and then his arms around Bucky’s waist, and Bucky’s legs are around Steve’s waist, and he throws his arm around Steve’s neck and smacks a messy kiss on his cheek.

“Hey,” he whispers against the dark fuzz there.

“Hey,” Steve replies, his voice warm and rich.

“We’ll…leave you two to catch up,” T’Challa says, and when Bucky pulls away a little, he sees that T’Challa is smiling indulgently.

“Wait,” Bucky says, “Dinner?” He’s still wrapped around Steve like a little monkey or a koala or something, but leaning away from him, making Steve compensate by shifting his weight backwards. Shuri laughs lightly; T’Challa gives her a _come on_ kind of gesture and Bucky looks between the two of them. “We have something important to discuss?”

“Captain Rogers _was_ the important thing, dorkus,” Shuri says. She reaches up to give Bucky a pat on the shoulder; Steve carries him out of the doorway and into the room proper to give the family room to pass. “Have a good night!” She waggles her eyebrows at them and Bucky catches T’Challa rolling his eyes.

The second — _literally the second_ Shuri and T’Challa are out the door, Steve kicks it shut, and he tightens his arms around Bucky and says, “So can I put you down now, punk?”

“No.” Bucky rubs his cheek against Steve’s, relishing the light, unfamiliar but, he decides, entirely pleasant scrape of the stubble. Steve smells like air freshener, and a little like Irish Spring, but underneath that he smells like salt and lavender and rosemary, the way Steve has always, always smelled. It’s baked into his skin, stitched into his hair, and nothing — not Stark’s serum or the war or seventy years in cryo — has proved enough to change it. Bucky could probably recognize Steve by that scent alone. If Steve were ever lost, they could give Bucky a dirty T-shirt and he’d sniff Steve out like a bloodhound.

“I’m gonna,” Steve says, “‘Cause I’m starving.” And he takes a couple steps forward and then leans down and unceremoniously dumps Bucky onto one of the chair-cushions, and Bucky sort of whines in protest and keeps his arm around Steve’s neck and buries his face in the spot where Steve’s throat meets his shoulder. Feels it in his cheeks, his eyelids, the bridge of his nose when Steve laughs, low and indulgent. “There’ll be plenty of time for that, pal.”

Bucky reaches up, feeling very small on the floor while Steve straightens up to his insane height, and takes his hand. Steve smiles at him the way he would smile at a child and takes the seat kitty-corner to Bucky. He gives Bucky’s hand a gentle squeeze before letting go and reaching for the boxes.

“One’s got pineapple,” he says, lifting a lid. “D’you know they can put pineapple on pizza?”

Bucky smiles, pushes away a fuzzy memory of a few weeks in the eighties when he thinks he was mostly himself, a brief period of treats and rewards, warm beds in nice hotels and warm meals. Over quickly — dead and gone, now, never to return. He suppresses a shudder. “I mighta heard something about that,” he says as lightly as he can.

“I got pineapple-pepperoni-onion, white sauce with chicken and eggplant, and breadsticks,” Steve says, “Best in New York, I shit you not —”

“You _what?”_ Bucky feels his eyes widen. People are always surprised at Steve’s filthy mouth — somehow in the seventy years between his untimely death and his rebirth or whatever, Steven I’ll-Fuckin’-Fight-You Rogers got rebranded as a paragon of virtue. But it’s not the cussing that trips Bucky up, just the very modern turn of phrase.

“You fucking heard me,” Steve says, biting his grin, but a thick line of pink has painted his cheeks and nose.

Bucky gives Steve a pretty hard side eye as he flips the lid on the breadsticks, which are clearly the buttery, chewy kind, topped in cheese and garlic and something green — dill, maybe. Even cold, his first bite nearly melts in his mouth, and he _hmms_ his appreciation.

Steve fucking attacks the pineapple pepperoni, finishing three giant slices in the time it takes Bucky to polish off his breadstick and start in on a slice of chicken eggplant. Which turns out to be phenomenal. There’s definitely wine in the cream sauce, and it’s so good he finds himself reaching for a second slice, despite his usual lack of appetite.

“So.” Steve looks at Bucky across the boxes, his brows drawn. “T’Challa says you have goats?”

For some reason, Bucky was expecting him to say something serious, possibly something very dark, and he laughs — which makes him choke on a chunk of eggplant. Steve reaches over and thumps him on the back, and he’s frowning like he’s concerned, but there’s laughter in his eyes.

Steve leans over and grabs a water bottle from the case Bucky keeps under the big window and hands it over to Bucky, who takes a long swig before attempting words. “Yeah,” he says, “I got goats. I’m a…goat herder, I guess. I milk them — there’s a dairy a couple miles out that makes the cheese pretty much everyone around here uses.”

“You —” Steve falters so hard, a bit of onion actually falls out of his mouth. “Sorry, it’s just, the toughest guy I’ve ever known, milking goats —”

“Yeah, yeah.” Bucky rolls his eyes and tries for a smile, but Steve’s teasing stings a bit. “It’s like occupational therapy, like they don’t got docks for me to sling cargo on up here, and being the — the Soldier didn’t exactly leave me with useable work experience —”

“Hey, Buck.” Steve reaches over and lays his hand on Bucky’s elbow, not grabbing him so much as just establishing a point of contact. His hand is warm and a little bit greasy. “Kiddo, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“It’s okay.” Bucky takes a deep breath. It _is_ okay. Fuck’s sake, Steve of all people knows — well, actually, not as much as he thinks he does, think God — but would never, would never dream of downplaying Bucky’s history, what he’s been through. “Wilson sent me a bunch of videos about service dogs and therapy animals at the VA and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder…It’s like that, I guess. S’what my shrink says, anyway. That’s how they help me.”

Steve smiles, and something in his eyes is so fucking tender, so close to pity that it makes Bucky want to turn away, but he keeps meeting them as he snags another breadstick. “Sounds like a real good thing, pal.”

Bucky nods, chewing slowly. “Do you,” he says with his mouth full, and then pauses to swallow. “Would you like to meet them?”

“What, tonight?” Steve looks surprised, and maybe…disappointed?

Bucky nods. “My neighbor lets them out when I can’t — she’s great, and she knows I have…bad days, but they still need to be brought in. You can come — if you want.”

“Buck.” Okay, not disappointed — if anything, Steve’s expression softens even more; it’s disgusting is what it is, Bucky decides. “Of course I want to.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, trying to make it sound like it doesn’t matter a great deal to him.

Steve smiles without opening his mouth.

They finish their dinner in more or less silence. Bucky manages a third slice of the chicken, and a third breadstick as well, and watches in awe as Steve puts everything else away — maybe he sort of remembers Steve being hungry all the time back in the war, but it was _war; everyone_ was hungry all the time. He never saw anything like this. “Damn,” he says as Steve chugs a water bottle, probably washing it all down.

Steve’s skin goes pink a little, and Bucky feels himself smiling for real — seventy years and a million degrees of separation from who they used to be, and he can still make Steve blush. It’s so close to what he remembers of Stevie from when he was little and laughably easy to wind up.

“Come on,” Bucky says, rising to his feet, once he’s sure Steve is finished. Steve looks uncertainly at the trash on the table. “The sun’s nearly set,” Bucky tells him. “The nannies are about a hundred times harder to bring in after dark — some of ‘em are black. We can clean up later.”

Steve stands, and Bucky can feel eyes on him as he goes to the door and picks up the little drawstring bag he keeps there; he shoves the door open with his left side and glances back at Steve, who’s just standing there. Bucky widens his eyes and grimaces a bit at him, the universal signal for: _well?_

Steve shakes himself out of an apparent reverie and joins him, reaching a hand out for the bag.

“I’ve got it,” Bucky says, pulling it away. “I can handle it myself.”

“Buck.” Bucky doesn’t meet Steve’s eyes, but he’s sure he’s wearing his best righteous martyr face. “Of course you can, I know you can. I just wanna carry my best fella’s stuff for him, huh?”

Bucky doesn’t want to be charmed, God-damn, doesn’t need a big strong man following him around and taking care of him, like he’s some invalid. But being treated like Steve’s best fella, like guys used to treat dames, like half the guys in their old Brooklyn neighborhood treated one another — and how he used to treat Steve half the time, if he’s honest with himself — it sounds appealing as hell, so he relinquishes the bag.

Steve tugs it open with apparent curiosity as Bucky shuts the door behind them. “Raisins?”

Bucky shrugs. “It’s what they like.” He reaches into the bag and grabs a couple, then walks ahead of Steve. “They don’t go far usually — there’s another fence about a hundred yards out — and they don’t really want to, most days.” He walks towards the low, fading sun, sky streaked with pink already, and hears Steve’s footsteps in the dry grass behind him. There are a few goats already inside the inner fence — or maybe still there — and Bucky holds out his hand to the first they come upon. “Hey there, sweet girl,” he says softly when she ambles up to take the raisins from his palm; her teeth scrape his skin, and her tongue is wet.

“Do they have names?” Bucky turns, and Steve is watching him with something that, if he had to name, he supposes he’d call _tender amusement._ “Who’s this?” He reaches for her just as Bucky pulls his hand back, damp with goat spit. She blinks blankly and allows Steve to gently scratch her pale head. 

“You’ve got Snow White,” Bucky says. He pilfers a couple more raisins from the bag and approaches another waiting girl, this one brown and white spotted like a cow, who’s been watching impassively from a few feet away. “This little lady,” he says, holding out his hand and letting her scrape up her treat, “is Ann Darrow.”

Steve’s eyes narrow, and Bucky throws him his best angelic smile, hoping Steve hasn’t quite caught on to his theme yet.

“So how exactly _does_ one wrangle goats?” Steve jogs a couple steps to catch up so he’s side-by-side with Bucky as they move on. Bucky opens the gate, and Steve closes it gently behind them.

“Confidence,” Bucky says, and Steve sort of half-double-takes at him. “I’m not kidding!” He chuckles. “You just…move like an alpha, show them you mean business, and they follow you. Also, treats.”

“Oh, there!” Steve finishes gaping at Bucky and points ahead. “Who’s she?”

Bucky approaches, checking the grey spots on her black head. “Scarlett.”

Steve’s eyes narrow again as Bucky gives Scarlett her treat. “Does Scarlett have a last name?”

Bucky bites his lip, and Steve elbows him lightly. “O’Hara,” he confesses, laughing.

“Nostalgic sonuvabitch.” Steve rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling.

* * *

When they finally come back to the house — with Scarlett O’Hara, Dorothy, Annabella Schmidt, Tracy Lord, and Cathy Earnshaw trotting obediently behind them — Steve is openly laughing at Bucky.

“I’ll probably never watch them,” he’s saying. “Tony would never let me live it down — and the originals weren’t that good, anyway.”

Bucky faux-gasps. “The original _Star Wars_ movies were some of the best ever made, Steven.”

Steve shakes his head, and his eyes are sparkling, and his grin is real, not sad or pitying, none of the things he was during dinner, the faces that Bucky is damn sick of seeing directed at him. “Once you’ve wrangled aliens, stayed young, all that jazz, doncha think science fiction seems a little dull in comparison?” He holds the gate open for Bucky, like a real gentleman, and closes it behind them. 

Bucky would like very much to not be charmed by this, but he’s been trying and failing since the thirties to not find Steve Rogers charming. “No, I don’t.” He holds the front door to the house open for Steve, and sticks his foot out to stop Tracy Lord from following them in. “I think,” he says as he follows Steve in, sans goats, “that’s what makes it good. There’s a version out there of all those things where good always prevails and the bad guys get their due and the tech only ever makes people’s lives better. Doesn’t that sound great?”

Steve smiles at him, down at him by just a little, and it’s fucking weird — so many things about this, remembering Stevie back home in their Brooklyn walkup, remembering the freshly minted Captain America — everything is just a little off. Looking at Steve now, it feels like Bucky is looking at his own memories in a funhouse mirror. He knows how — exactly how, intimately in the details — the scrap of a kid who was smaller than a dame and skinny-sick to boot shot up like a bean sprout and filled out like a wrestler, but it’s one thing to know and another to see, to touch. There wasn’t a whole lotta seeing or much touching at all back in their war days, Bucky doesn’t think. Hands on shoulders, brotherly cuffs on the head, the kind of stuff museums display.

Back in the thirties in a sepia-toned memory, Buky slung his arm around Steve, hooked his chin over Steve’s head without even having to try, kept him close and warm walking home through New York winters. Now it’s late summer in East Africa, and that same Steve is standing in front of him, looking like Michelangelo’s David and smelling like goat hair. Something about it, about the distance between them and their past selves, punches a hole straight through Bucky’s chest, hollows him out like someone went at his insides with a melon baller. He brings his arm up around himself without even thinking, tucks his hand up where he’s still got kind of an armpit on the left side.

Steve must see _something,_ must see the way Bucky’s face and body shift from joking to choking up, because Bucky turns his eyes to Steve’s and they’re clouded with concern — not pity, not cloying coddling and _my poor guy,_ just the real worry someone feels when they see a friend in pain. “Buck?” He steps forward, kind of crowds Bucky without actually touching him. “Hey, pal, what’s wrong?” His voice is so gentle, so soft, like a blanket, a sweater, a cloud descending and coating Bucky in warm fog. “Bucky.”

To his mounting horror and humiliation, Bucky feels his eyes fill with tears — and no, no, his head doctor wouldn’t like him being embarrassed, would say that he should let his emotions go, _pull your shit together, Barnes,_ he tells himself, and he steps forward and sort of knocks his forehead against Steve’s cheek. “It’s just real good to see ya, Stevie,” he says, and he’s embarrassed to hear the tears clear as day in his voice, thick in his throat, but Steve just brings his arms up and wraps them around Bucky, starts swaying ever so slightly back and forth — Bucky is reminded of a child being soothed, and of another version of himself wrapping his arms around a shaky version of Steve and swaying like this, too.

“Okay,” Steve says softly, “Okay, pal, I’m not going anywhere.” He gets his arms around Bucky’s back, pulls him in tight and hooks his chin over Bucky’s right shoulder; Bucky’s arm is pinned to his own side under the force and bulk of Steve’s. “It’s me, darling. You’re safe, and you’re okay, and I’m not going anywhere.” He’s basically babbling, but he’s doing it in a sure, firm voice.

A lot of people think that that strong, authoritative tone Steve uses so often, and employs so strategically, is his Captain America Voice. While it’s true that’s how Steve speaks when giving orders or addressing teammates, Bucky knows that tone predates Captain America by at least ten years. 

That’s the voice that dared fourteen-year-old Bucky to eat a live beetle (he did). The one that demanded to know who’d given seventeen-year-old Bucky a black eye and a split lip behind the corner store (his name was Billy). The one that once (probably more than once, knowing Steve as Bucky did) sat up with a USO girl for hours, skipping sleep completely, because she’d gotten word that her fella had stepped out on her. Bucky had lain nearby that night, and he can still remember drifting off to the soft, firm timbre of Steve’s voice: _“you’re stronger than he is; you’re brilliant and beautiful and talented, and you don’t need anyone in your life who’s gonna treat you like less than you are, understand?”_

Steve didn’t cultivate that voice to bark orders, but to comfort, to wheedle, to make people believe in him back when his voice was stronger than anyone ever believed his body would be. When Steve speaks like that, people believe in him and believe what he says. Always have.

“I’m right here, and I’m not going away,” Steve says firmly, and something in Bucky snaps like a bungee cord — 

“But you _will,”_ he says, and even to his own ears his voice is weak, weedy, tearstained. “You can’t stay forever —” And it would be selfish to ask him to.

“That’s true,” Steve says, gentle as anything, “but we don’t have to worry about that right now. Right now, I’m here, and tomorrow, I’ll be here.”

His voice is balm — Bucky can physically feel his heart slowing, blood tracking its way back into his anxiety-numb fingertips. “Just — talk to me, Stevie,” he says, and ducks his head to shove it into Steve’s shoulder, pressing his cold runny nose against Steve’s shirt. Probably getting snot on it.

“You’re getting snot on my shirt,” Steve says evenly, and Bucky snorts a hysterical little laugh, probably worsening it. “I love you, Bucky. I love you so much, do you even know how I missed you, how I worried about you? I ain’t me without you, kid.”

Bucky rubs his face into Steve’s shirt and smells him, goat and musk and sweat with his sweet Steve-smell underneath, and waits for the shaky feeling to pass, and Steve just rocks them back and forth and talks quietly, not minding the remnants of dinner still spread across the table, or that Bucky is probably staining his nice shirt with tears.

“I never thought I’d get you back,” Steve whispers, and presses a kiss to Bucky’s (probably greasy, _crap, oh well)_ hair.

“You got me back broken,” Bucky says, muffled into his shoulder.

Steve stops his gentle swaying, pulls back a little and takes an arm from around Bucky to hook a finger under Bucky’s chin, gently pressing until Bucky is looking up just a bit into his crystalline eyes. “I wouldn’t trade you,” Steve says a little fiercely. A little more like how he talks to opponents or rivals. A little like how he talks to Stark. “I wish I could go back and kill every single son of a bitch who ever pledged loyalty to HYDRA. I would in a heartbeat. I would tear them down from the bottom up to stop you suffering.”

Bucky has a mental image of Steve, in his old USO costume and his first shield, tearing down an army of agents like he’s clearing a forest.

“I wish I could give you back the years they took,” Steve continues, possibly not realizing that he’s sort of disturbed Bucky, “but I need you to know that I wouldn’t trade you today to get back you from eighty years ago. I don’t love ghosts and memories, baby, I love you. However you are, whoever you are.” His face is wide open — Bucky has heard people call Steve hard to read, even emotionless, but he feels so much and so hard. Always has, and he’s always been rock solid on the outside, but he has tells — shining eyes, twisting lips, his tongue poking into his cheek. Bucky could always read him.

Until. Until he couldn’t. Until there was an intruder in his brain and he was looking at Steve through a kaleidoscope, all scrambled up, completely inscrutable.

But he’s getting better, and he can see the sincerity welling up in Steve’s eyes, spilling out. The affection. The blank honesty that Bucky has honest-to-God never seen Steve share with anyone else. Maybe Peggy.

T’Challa and Shuri are kind to Bucky, and most of his neighbors are as well. He has good friends, a good shrink, and the handful of Avengers he’s met outside of the Germany fiasco have been polite but distant with him — aside from the Stark kid, which.

Well.

People know of the Soldier, and they know, or know of, Sgt James Buchanan Barnes — but that’s all anybody knows: either the old veteran, or the monster. Even Natalia, who treats him kindly and trained with him way back when, who knows the extent of what he once was and no longer is, tends to hold him at arm’s length.

But Steve is special — special to Bucky specifically. He knows every part of him, from a little boy playing in the streets to a soldier to the Soldier; he looks at Bucky and knows everything he’s ever been, not from stories or exhibits but because he was there. Steve could fuck off into the ether with all the memories he’ll ever need of his favorite version of Bucky, he _could,_ but he’s here instead, looking at Bucky and all he’s been and all he is and choosing to stand right here.

“Steve,” Bucky chokes out, his voice rough but steadier than it was a few minutes ago. “I can’t —” _God. Fuck it._ He’s one of the oldest people alive, cheated death more times than he remembers, fought in three lifetimes worth of wars, but here he falters; he can’t get the words to just unstick from between his ribs and travel up his throat and out of his mouth. “I haven’t said that to…you’re the last person I ever told it to. I can’t…” He trails off, biting his lip.

Steve cocks his head, brow furrowed, and then it smooths again and his eyes grow sadder somehow, greying like stormy water. “Baby,” he says again, but it doesn’t sound like a platitude, it sounds like a commendation.

“I do,” Bucky says. He feels dry, empty. Wrung out and hung up. “More than — God, more than anything ever, more than I thought possible, Stevie, I —”

“I want to,” Bucky says helplessly.

Steve just smiles a little at him and says, “How bout you go get ready for bed while I clean up from dinner, huh?”

Bucky can tell he’s being dismissed, that Steve wants a minute alone, so he reluctantly allows Steve to detach from him. “Recycle, compost, landfill bins are out back,” he says, “not marked in English but you can figure it out.”

Steve presses a fuzzy kiss to Bucky’s temple and crosses him to the table, and Bucky stands for a moment and takes a deep breath before he can convince himself to move. He kneels by the bed and gathers a towel and pajamas from the drawers he keeps hidden away there. Once he’s alone in his little bathroom, he just leans heavily on the counter and closes his eyes for a moment.

 _Okay,_ he tells himself. _Just shower and get back out there, it’s not hard._ He manages to get himself undressed — honestly, whatever he’s said about the inaccessibility of the accessible clothing movement, bless Shuri for introducing him to jeans he can get in and out of without help — and into a lukewarm shower, where he pays closer attention than usual to his hair, washing it slowly and carefully and then using the coconut oil conditioner he saves for special occasions.

He deliberates for a moment over whether to put a shirt on or not, and ends up just pulling his shawl from the morning back over his left shoulder, sans shirt. _No need to overwhelm Steve with the sight of it._ Teeth brushed, flossed, with the drawstring on his cotton pants tied in a haphazard little bow, he pushes against the door and, feeling weirdly anxious to enter his own damn bedroom (slash kitchen slash den), finds himself facing Steve.

“Hey.” Steve jumps up from his perch on the end of Bucky’s bed. His eyes dart around for a moment before they land on Bucky. “I can go, or —”

“Shut the hell up,” Bucky says, and Steve blinks at him. “You’re staying right here with me…If that’s what you want,” he tacks on quickly, feeling stupid and oafish — maybe Steve doesn’t want to, he’s probably overwhelmed — 

“Of course I want to, kiddo,” Steve says, and crosses back to Bucky. “Speaking of…” He reaches out and tugs at the fastener on Bucky’s scarf. “You wear this to bed?”

“When I got company I do,” Bucky replies wryly. “You don’t need to see what I got under there, Stevie, trust me.”

Steve, for his part, looks thoroughly unimpressed. “Buck, I’ve been in more wars than I can count on one hand — I’ve watched people get their limbs blown off right in front of me. Besides which, you could be a fuckin’ leper and it wouldn’t stop me wantin’ you. Whatever you got going on under that thing, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before and it sure as hell ain’t gonna turn me off from you, so just take the damn scarf off, would ya?”

Bucky searches Steve’s eyes, wets his lips, searches some more, and Steve lets him, just gazes back, jaw set; impassive, immoveable. Finally Bucky rolls his eyes and reaches to untie his shawl, letting it flap gently to the floor.

“Oh, Buck…” Steve reaches towards him haltingly, like Bucky is liable to be spooked, and runs a light hand over the map of rough scar tissue where Bucky’s left arm once resided. It doesn’t have a whole ton of sensation right where the scarring has set in, although when Shuri first pulled his weaponized arm off and set to work healing the nerves that HYDRA’s med team had taken zero care in tethering it to, it had hurt so badly that he’d writhed and shouted and had to be put under. “How,” Steve says, “I mean, you had a prosthetic —”

“Shuri operated on me herself,” Bucky says quickly, heading him off. “She gave me the choice — said that she had options, that I could have whatever I wanted, and this is what I asked for — I was real sick of having a weapon soldered to my shoulder.”

Steve shakes his head a little and smooths his hand over Bucky’s shoulder. His touch is solid, warm on Bucky’s fried-out skin. “You are so much,” he says quietly, eyes lidded. “You’re awesome,” he says. 

_Awesome_ doesn’t feel like a Steve word — he means it in the classic sense, Bucky realizes, and he can feel the blood rushing to his cheeks, heating him from hairline to throat. He stares at the floor, at the couple inches of space between his own bare toes and the tips of Steve’s expensive-looking boots. Tries to ignore the way it chafes to be complimented, how much he wants to argue, start a useless fight that would make them both miserable. “Don’t be a sap,” he mumbles.

“I will be,” Steve says, leans forward for a moment and Bucky feels the feather-light pressure of Steve’s lips on his forehead before he leans back again. “I will continue to be sappy and smother you, but at this exact second I should get ready for bed.”

“Do you need…sweats, or toothpaste…?”

“I have my stuff,” Steve says, and gestures to the spot under the window, the place usually reserved for Bucky’s dining table, where Bucky sees two designer-looking suitcases and a matching duffel. “T’Challa’s driver brought it in when I arrived.”

“How did I miss that?” He does vaguely remember T’Challa holding a single bag…

“You were being…impressively single-minded.” Steve gently rubs the stump of Bucky’s left arm again. “Thank you,” he says softly, “for trusting me with this.” And then he takes his hand back, and Bucky is irrationally desperate to chase it, but he has to let Steve go clean up, so he just stands there and thinks some more about how Steve is _there._ Captain fucking America, Bucky’s Stevie, that kid from Brooklyn — memories fly unbidden through Bucky’s mind, a million _I love you_ s, _I want you_ s, _till the end of the line_ s. Vague memories of fists, Peggy’s niece in the garage before the fight, kisses Bucky wasn’t part of and kisses that he was, longing, touch, wants that Bucky buried so deeply he thought he might never find them again.

He remembers looking at Steve for the first time in decades, wondering who he was, trying to nudge away the sense of déjà vu that poked at his mind, being unsatisfied with the answers he was given but having enough sense of self-preservation not to push his luck by asking more questions.

And now here he is, not a soldier, not the Soldier, just Bucky, just an old man from Brooklyn and his handsome young lover alone in a lovely home in a gorgeous country, taking their breaks where they get them just like everyone else in the world, and it might be okay how fragile all of it feels, because things tend to blur and fray and fall apart at the edges when Bucky’s alone for too long, but when Steve touches him, everything feels almost solid.

“Buck?” Steve puts a hand on Bucky’s shoulder, coming up from behind, and Bucky startles so hard that when he whips around, he falls automatically into a half-crouched defensive position. Remnants of some buried habit from who’s to even say which era of his life. “Hey,” Steve says mildly, eyes wide, hands spread and empty, and Bucky straightens, a blush creeping across his cheeks.

“Sorry,” Steve says. He’s wearing boxer-briefs and that’s it, and Bucky finds himself caught on Steve’s chest, his abs, his thighs, his collarbones. He’s maybe never been less in the mood for sex — it’s a thing that comes and goes, mostly goes, these days — but Steve is a whole seperate kind of beauty. He’s a Greek sculpture, a Roman idol, America’s golden boy, standing in Bucky’s bedroom in his underwear, and Bucky is so lucky to love the gentlest giant in the world.

“Don’t be sorry,” he says, and his voice scrapes his throat, and Steve is standing there with toothpaste breath and a bare chest, and Bucky says, “Do you want to go to bed now?”

Steve smiles, soft, tired, and says, “God, yes.” He follows Bucky the few steps to his bed and pauses, says, “Do you have a side?”

“Don’t matter to me,” Bucky says, “I usually toss and turn all night anyway.” Steve gets that look in his eyes that seems like pity. “Come on,” Bucky says, “You gotta stop makin’ that face at me, it’s gonna give me a complex, Stevie.”

Steve shrugs. “What can I say?”

“Don’t feel bad for me.” Bucky chooses the left side arbitrarily, stalks over and tugs the covers down with probably way more force than is strictly necessary.

Steve crosses to the right side, faces Bucky down like a challenge. “I _do_ feel bad for you,” he says in his stern voice. And then his face twists, brow crumpling. “I’m trying real hard, here, pal. But I don’t know what to do or say to you. You gotta throw me a line out here.”

Steve’s eyes are so bright and hot, like a spotlight on Bucky’s face. He looks down, leans with his hand on the mattress. His hair falls in a still-damp curtain over his face, and when he glances up through it, Steve is watching him with an open expression on his stupid, earnest face.

“Maybe don’t try so hard,” Bucky grinds out, and then he takes a deep breath and forces himself to be gentle: “I like it when you don’t try. Don’t compensate.”

Steve shakes his head. “Not sure I know how.”

_“Steve.”_

_“Bucky.”_ Steve pulls back the covers on his side and sits on the bed, swings his legs up and scoots up against the pillows. He pats the spot beside him and Bucky sighs but plops down there, sits parallel to Steve; he’d have to turn his head to look at him. Steve puts an arm around Bucky’s waist and draws him in, rubs his side a little. “Buck, I don’t know how to talk to you,” he says, and when Bucky sits up straight, tries to pull away, he tightens his hold and says, “No, wait —”

“For what, Steve?” Bucky tosses his hand up, frustrated, lets it slap back down against his thigh.

“This is what I mean,” Steve says, huffs a sigh with a hint of laughter to it. “I mean, _I don’t know how to talk to you,_ but I want to _learn._ I don’t know what’s gonna set you off or send you spiralling, what will upset you and how to make it better if I do. I still don’t know you as well as I should in a lot of ways, but I want to. Does that make sense?”

“Nope,” Bucky says, but he snorts and leans into Steve again. “Yeah, though. I think. I just…I hate this, Stevie. I know I oughta be grateful you’re here at all and I am but I hate not knowin’ you like I should. Not bein’ — being right, ya know?” 

They bring out the Brooklyn in one another, Bucky notes quietly to himself. Code switching — his shrink taught him that term after he realized how easily and often his accent and vernacular shifted and spiralled through a bad bout of depersonalization. It’s not a HYDRA brain fuckery thing — score one for Bucky — it’s something that basically everyone who’s lived in different regions does. Second nature.

Steve puts the hand that’s not wrapped around Bucky’s waist on his cheek, gently nudging him to turn his head, and when he does, Steve’s right up against him, kissing him softly — then sloppily, on the cheek, blowing a raspberry and making Bucky wrinkle his nose and playfully push him away.

“I know what you mean, kid,” Steve says, pressing his forehead to Bucky’s temple. “But I think we’re doin’ alright.”

Bucky captures Steve by the lips again, just for a moment, just because he can. That’s what’s important — whether he and Steve are ginger with one another, whether they chafe and argue, Steve is _here,_ not in New York, not on a mission in Europe or Asia or South America, but here in this marvelous country, in Bucky’s home, in Bucky’s bed, in Bucky’s _arms. (Arm,_ he thinks wryly to himself.)

Back in Brooklyn, all that time ago, Bucky could always pin Steve down. Literally pin him — against the sofa, over the kitchen counter, kissing him against the wall, forcing him to stay in bed as he battle croup and colds, influenza and a memorable (terrifying) bout of pneumonia. Always knew where Steve was without having to ask, because more often than not, Steve was right there beside him, causing trouble, double dating, at the soda fountain and the dance floor and the movie theater. In the kitchen, singing off-key. In their rusting tin bathtub that they’d saved for to keep Steve and his weak immunities out of the building’s communal shower.

And then the war had come, and Steve had changed so much to look at, and Bucky had been damn well pissed that Steve had found a way into the thick of it when he should’a been safe back home, but it had been just about immediately clear that it was still his Stevie, just in a much hardier package — still the gritty, bullheaded lionheart Bucky had always loved, with bulk and muscle where there’d once been the protrusion of bird-fragile bones. Bucky had barely faltered.

“When we was kids,” Bucky says quietly, dropping his head and speaking into Steve’s bare shoulder, “back in the war, I really thought that the serum was the biggest change we’d ever face. And I sure as hell never thought we’d hit a hundred years a’ life.”

“Every day with you is like a hundred years of life,” Steve quips into Bucky’s hair, breath displacing strands and tickling his scalp.

“What does that even mean?”

Steve laughs, and it’s a soft, sleepy monosyllable. “I dunno, Buck. I’ve been up for like thirty-six hours.

 _Just for me,_ Bucky thinks, and then he says it, and it comes out as a question: “Just for me?”

“Yeah,” Steve says; his mouth is against Bucky’s head now. “Course, pal.”

“Thirty-six hours,” Bucky muses. “I oughta let you sleep.”

“I can think a’ things I’d rather do.” But it has the cadence of a joke, and when Steve shifts his hips to rut lightly against Bucky’s side, there’s nothing there.

But Bucky should still probably say something, should probably head that off. Just in case. He opens his mouth to tell Steve that he’s not sure if of when or ever, and what comes out now is: “Ah-huh-hum…”

“Hey, I’m kidding, kiddo,” Steve says, and a hand comes up to card through Bucky’s hair. “Gone this long without, and I can go the rest of my life, too, and it wouldn’t be a hardship at all. You hear me?”

Bucky can’t help the little noise of relief that escapes him. “It… _probably_ won’t be the rest of your life.”

“But definitely not tonight,” Steve says. More like a reassurance than a question.

“Not tonight,” Bucky says. “Flight. Migraine. You are physically literally so hot and I really just want you to hold me and keep me warm while we sleep.” He knows he’s blushing, and knows Steve notices, and that he doesn’t mind.

“Sweetheart, of course,” Steve says, and Bucky pulls back and slides off the bed, gets his legs under himself, and when he turns back, Steve is grinning widely, cracked-open with like his whole top row of teeth on display, looking just genuinely so happy and Bucky can’t believe he’s responsible for that. Isn’t so sure he wants to believe it. He just turns off the lights and then makes his way back to bed, blinking at the sudden change from warm dim light to total darkness. He finds the bed on muscle memory — his body knows how many steps, which direction — as every night, but tonight when he pulls back the sheets and the beautiful soft quilt again, there’s a warm body wriggling out of a sitting position and snuggling down under the covers. 

And when Bucky flops into bed, he rolls back into waiting arms, smells Steve’s nice Steve smell, and he feels better than he maybe has in years. The dark doesn’t frighten him, and Steve is the one thing he knows body and mind and soul, through programming and past it, in the darkness, he’d know him blind, know his feel anywhere. And he chooses to think that Steve is still smiling all wide and goofy at him as Steve folds his arms, hot and vice-like, around Bucky’s chest and squeezes him, turns and presses his hips against Bucky’s ass, lips in Bucky’s hair, shoves a calf between Bucky’s and the other over, none of it to start anything, all just because it feels good, because he can, because Bucky is right there pressing back into it and enjoying the warmth, the care.

“Darlin’,” Steve says mushily into the side of Bucky’s neck, below his ear — the caress of his lips tickles something awful and Bucky can’t help but wiggle, push his shoulder up, relishing in the soft, sleepy breath of a laugh it earns him. “God, I’ve missed you,” Steve says. “Missed holding you, missed talkin’ to you. I love you so much.”

“You’re mine,” Bucky says softly, knows Steve can hear him. 

“I’m yours,” Steve says, smushing his face into the back of Bucky’s neck, nosing at the top of his spine. “Yours, punk, pal, as long as you’ll have me.” His voice is fading, sleep taking over. His eyelashes flutter, Bucky can feel it on his skin — whether that’s intentional, he can’t tell. Butterfly kisses. That’s what kids used to call that.

Bucky lies there and waits, matches his breaths to Steve’s — Steve breathes slowly, evenly, and that’s not new but it’s always marvelous when Bucky thinks to compare it to a young life of asthma and cigarettes and smog. Bucky long since stopped believing in God — though apparently he was wrong about _gods,_ plural, and if Odin is real then he supposes that God as in _God_ might as well be — but he thinks regardless that Steve’s health is a miracle of sorts. That their shared longevity is. Lightning never strikes the same place twice, isn’t that what they say? But it seems to have struck a couple’a dumb punks from New York over and over, so maybe there are benevolent eyes in the sky after all. Maybe Bucky and Steve are blessed. Maybe they’re lucky. Maybe they have Thor or Zeus or Apollo on their side, maybe they just have the random selection of good times and bad, progress and destruction, the Russian roulette wheel of life spinning mercilessly on and Steve and Bucky being no exception to the high of winning, the terror of the barrel, the relief as it clicks by, empty, and they’re spared another round. 

Maybe Bucky is just too introspective for his own damn good. That’s what he’s telling himself as his eyes close, as his mind drifts and his muscles shift and he slips into sleep.

* * *

Bucky wakes with clear eyes as pre-dawn light seeps through the windows, the light easing over the horizon somewhere beyond the walls of his cozy little home. His skin feels overheated and he must have wriggled around a fair amount in his sleep, because he’s still cradled in Steve’s arms, but their hold has loosened quite a bit and Bucky is facing towards him now, eye-to-Adam’s apple with Steve, who’s snoring lightly; his chest rises evenly and the softest little snorts find their way out of him.

Bucky is safe here, he’s warm and well cared for. That’s all true when Steve isn’t here as well, but at this exact moment there are no empty spaces in Bucky’s life, no aching head, no gaping emotional caverns that need sorted out right at this moment. Right at this moment, right here, Bucky is comfortable. Hell, he’s on his way to downright contentment. So he snuggles deeper into Steve, presses his face against Steve’s warm, hairless chest and without a single sound, he shapes the words into that smooth, hot expanse: _I love you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> Bucky's goats are all named for women from old movies I think he might have seen, because make-believe land can have anything I want. And I want Bucky to be a giant fucking dork.
> 
> Feel free to hit me up on Tumblr at fourgetregret.tumblr.com or at my brand spankin' new twitter, @ryrypeaches, if you have any questions, comments, or just love Cap!


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